In this excerpt from the film Downside Up (1984) by the UK director Tony Hill, a camera orbits at 90 degrees over a country picnic, with the perspective eventually flipping upside down before disappearing into the ground. What follows is a merry-go-round of quotidian scenes – pigs in a barn, children playing beside a stone wall, a kitchen table – each emerging from darkness, as the filmmaker uses inventive editing and camera-rigging techniques to give the impression of a ‘double-sided ground flipping like a tossed coin’. Technically impressive, the film is also a thought-provoking exploration of point of view, and how our exteroception, especially our relationship to the ground, shapes our perspective.
Other worlds pop in and out of view when the perspective shifts by degrees
Director: Tony Hill
1 October 2018
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